Tuesday, January 8, 2013

HUNGRY FOR PARIS & HUMBLE PIE

HUMBLE PIE by Gordon Ramsay

HUNGRY FOR PARIS by Alexander Lobrano

For the most part, restaurant reviews are as interesting to me as traffic reports in that I do not expect the reporter to reveal if he had a fight with his wife on a morning he faced bad traffic. Contrast
this with good food writing that exudes soul, and offers as much insight on
food as it does the diner and the dining experience.

In Singapore, any culture created
by a chef or owner is limited to the food and decor, and diluted by untrained wait
staff. Although we are not short of good dining venues, it’s hard to really differentiate
one place from another in terms of service and culture. Thanks to our diverse ethnic
melting pot, cultural clashes are increasingly common in restaurants. I’ve had
to speak Mandarin to a Chinese waiter at an Indian restaurant, struggled to
understand the heavy accent of a Filipino server at a Korean BBQ restaurant who
also could not explain the many varied small dishes laid out on my table, and stumped
many wait staff by simply asking them to describe a dish.

Familiarity with returning customers
also seem to be a thing of the past with high staff turnover. Nobody remembers
you on your second visit.

For this reason, HUNGRY FOR PARIS (2008) restored my belief
that it takes more than good food for a good dining experience. The book consists of reviews of 102 Parisian restaurants by American food writer, Alexander
Lobrano, who lives in the city. Personalized with true anecdotes, his relationships
with the restaurants reviewed go beyond mere acquaintanceship, and above pallid
perfunctory observations.

If the way to a man’s heart is
through his stomach, it is not surprising then that this book offers heart-warming
glimpses into Lobrano’s life in Paris. Start at Preface as he recounts what stoked his passion for Paris and French
food. ‘The Happy Eater’s Almanac’ is
a must-read if all you have ever heard about dining in Paris are about haughty wait
staff. You will discover that having a meal in a Parisian establishment is more
than a means to relieve hunger. There is a high degree of respect between the
server and the diner, and the diner for the chef that is often misunderstood by
non-natives as cold and distant. According to the author, you can expect
servers to know what they are serving without dashing back to the kitchen to
ask!

Indeed, bigotry will soon spoil
anything that could be enjoyed from a Parisian dining experience. It's best to leave
rigid opinions to starve at home.

HUMBLE PIE (2006) is a Christmas gift from a daughter who knows I
enjoy food writing that has soul. Ramsay is a true disciple of the kitchen –
bearing up its heat and rigors the same way he does life.

He has the same strong opinions
about food and running a restaurant as he does about drug addicts. Rejecting
the notion that addiction is a disease and that he is part responsible for his
brother’s addiction, he said: ‘Addicts are selfish, the most selfish people you’ll
ever meet. And self-pitying. And manipulative. Always making promises they’ll
never keep. They disgust me. If I’m part of the problem I’d like to know why it’s
me that picks up the bill every time Ronnie visits the clinic.’

That is a rare aseptic statement from
a book richly peppered with the non-food related f-word.

His advice to loss-making
high-end restaurants: ‘Your location decides a menu. It’s really all about the
customer. No one should ever forget that, no matter how great their sauces are.’

Where you can get it: Loan from NLB. S$27.81 Kinokuniya [ISBN : 9780812976830]

The Couch Blogger

I'm grateful to my father for teaching me to read, and introducing me to a couple who were voracious readers who modeled for me a lifestyle of reading in the family. Readers are instinctively drawn to each other and I'm grateful for friends who had shared their love of books with me. People who love to cook serve food, but book lovers know that if something is a good read, their friends must have it too because there is nothing more intimate than sharing a book with someone. My reviews are reflections on the books I have read - so they are very personal and stretch your imagination beyond the gist of the book. Whether you are a reader or not, I hope you will find a title here that inspires.